by the Night Writer

It’s been a hectic week already and I’ve had little time to ponder blog-postings even if there’s a lot of material just laying around, what with the Mall Diva’s birthday, the arrival of two Chinese students who will be staying with us for a little while they find a place to live, and preparing my notes for the “Are You Marriageable?” class (only one more week to go). Here are a few odds and ends that have caught my attention…

This is a picture of the bike we bought the Mall Diva for her birthday.

It’s very similar to Hayden’s new bike, who didn’t find it so amusing that the Diva and I referred to this style as a “Grandma Bike.” I thought it was amusing, until I discovered that you don’t mess with grandma.

This is the time of year when Beloit college comes out with its annual “Mindset” list for faculty describing the things that happened before the incoming freshman class members were born. I had penciled in doing a post about this, but Mr. Dilettante beat me to it. I guess I can cut him some slack since he’s a Beloit alumnus and he did a great job of dissecting the Academic “mindset” that came up with this year’s list. Currently my mindset is “waste not, want not”, so here are a few things that Beloit left off the list that I added to Mr. D’s comment section:

For the class of 2012…

• …There has never been a Soviet Union (yet).
• …There has always been one Germany.
• …Nelson Mandela has never been in prison.
• …Salman Rushdie has always been under a death sentence.
• …”Imelda” has always been the nickname of someone with a lot of shoes.
• …Ronald Reagan has never been president.
• …Pete Rose has always been banned from baseball.
• …There has always been a Sega Genesis.
• …Bart Simpson has always been 10 years old.
• …Iran has always been pissed off.

Last year at the end of the season I announced on this blog and to my Fantasy Football league that I was stepping down as Commissioner and retiring from the game. Yesterday I learned that my old league is disbanding because no one else wants to step up and be the Commish. I guess that makes me the MVP…

Finally, I was blessed and surprised to get a link from Mitch at Shot in the Dark for the “Man in the Street” post the other day. In the three-plus years I’ve been blogging, two things have always amazed me. The first is that I’m still doing it (which set in at about the 6-month mark), and the second is how hard it is to predict when a post will get someone’s attention and suddenly drive a lot of traffic to your blog. Certainly there have been “masterpieces” I’ve written and then sat back waiting for a book offer and never even scored a comment, and then something I almost didn’t post doubles my average traffic in one day. It’s moments like that that help explain amazing item #1. Thanks, Mitch, and to everyone who commented!

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